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Security Beat
TSA Struggling with 'Stovepiped' Information Infrastructure
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By Stew Magnuson and Breanne Wagner
Anyone who has followed the Defense Department’s never-ending struggle to allow its disparate communications systems to link to each other knows what the term “stovepiped” means.
Different systems used by different services built by different contractors are not able to share information.
The Transportation Security Administration — starting with a clean slate in 2001 — could have avoided these pitfalls, but instead chose ad hoc technologies that resulted in a wasteful, inefficient information backbone, according to a Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report.
Part of the blame falls on Congress and the tight deadlines it imposed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the report said.
“Due to time constraints, TSA’s technical environment evolved in a decentralized manner, leading to stovepiped systems with limited information sharing and technical standards,” the report said.
For example, performance data on airport baggage screeners and metal detectors must be collected from every machine once per hour. Each system has its own way of collecting, storing and downloading data. A TSA staff member must take this data, write a daily report and e-mail or fax the information to TSA headquarters. The process is “cumbersome, time consuming and labor intensive,” the report said.
TSA concurred with the report’s findings and spelled out plans to address some of the issues. The report warned that TSA will have to beef up its hiring to effectively get a handle on the problem.
“The declining number of staff within the central IT division also impedes the [chief information officer’s] ability to manage the IT infrastructure and support new technology requirements.”
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